Pushing Buttons

       I've been waiting for this all my life. I wonder every day, will today be the day? Decisions, decisions. I don't have a name, or at least not in the humanoid sense, however the word release is tattooed on my face, so I assume that that's my name. Day after day, the president of the United States was faced with a daunting decision. On one hand, he could end a war. On the other hand, he can let it continue, and sacrifice a few for the good of many. He would be responsible for giving the order that would make my life meaningful. A decision that would impact the outcome of World War II. 

From the conversations, debates in some instances, that people had around me I could gauge that the other people started it, but isn't that what everyone says? That the other person “starts” it. I was installed into the cockpit of the B-29 that fateful day I that was instrumental in an act of retaliation on the morning of August 6^th, 1945. I remember communicating technopathetically with a few friends of mine over the years leading up to that wonderful morning. The morning where I was finally pushed for the first and last time.

 Four years before on December 7th 1941, I lost hundreds of friends. They were blown to pieces never to be pushed again, in Hawaii on the shores of Pearl Harbor. I heard thousands of humanoids were killed too. 2,403 humanoids to be exact. I wondered then if this would finally make the president angry enough to use me. Finally, I would be the one to avenge my techno bud's deaths. I waited year after year. Thousands of triggers were pushed, thousands of times. I remember thinking it wasn’t fair, they got to make a difference, they got to live out their purpose. World War II was long and devastating. 416,800 triggers would never be pushed again. I felt so bad for all the buttons that would never be pushed again. I know firsthand, how it feels not to be pushed, especially when that's all you want to do. That is our purpose as a buttons, to be pushed at least once over the corse of our duty as buttons, at least most of us, some of us are destined to never be pushed, some are destined to only be pushed once like me. I sat waiting for the U.S. to get closer to Japan, to get close enough for the pilot of my aircraft to push me and it would make a difference in the war, not just an impact because what I held the power to was the only one of its kind.

 I sat and waited for someone to get inside the cockpit of the aircraft I belong to. I waited four years, 1,460 days in a row. I wondered if today, I would make history, one of the first of my kind to do that. Pilot after pilot got into other aircrafts with all the other buttons that were lucky enough to get pushed. I knew that when I was pushed it would end the lives of thousands of people, but they started it remember. 

For decades the US president fought the Japanese and their sense of entitlement over China. The Kamikaze style bombing of Pearl Harbor was just what Franklin D Roosevelt needed to declare World War II. it pushed enough buttons, pun intended. I have been waiting ever since for my turn to affect the outcome of the war. To bring an end to the destruction and death that surrounded me, all the broken buttons, all the destroyed cockpits and blown bits. Behind my surface, laid wires and other means of connection to the B-29 bomber and the wonderful surprise it held for Japan. 

Just before I was pushed in August, someone pushed my friend, a button on the Manhattan Project, and the first successful test for the plutonian bomb. I envied my friend Testing. He was the trigger on the controls that lead to the discovery and use of the Atomic Bomb. If it wasn’t for him, I would never have been pushed in the first place. By July 1945, when the test for the plutonium bomb was completed, allied powers had already defeated German troops in Europe. I kept hearing the pilots talking about a “little boy” that they put in my aircraft hold. A “new kind of weapon”. I found out after I was pushed that “Little Boy” was the nickname given to it the atomic bomb I would later release as my name said I would. I made sure I was ready. I couldn't malfunction that fateful day. I couldn't let the US or the world down. 

It was time. Early morning August 6^th, 1945, we all went up in the air. The aircraft, the pilot, the “little boy” and me. “Will he finally push me?” I kept asking myself this question as we flew closer and closer. Then, 2000 miles above the ground over Hiroshima, he did! 

Click, BOOM!

I did it. I released the “little boy”! I watched as the mushroom cloud followed behind us like it wanted to take us with it while we flew away. Hiroshima was no more. Approximately 80,000 people were killed instantly, and thousands would later die, poisoned as a result of the radiation that lingered in the air.

 I finally was pushed, that would be the first and only time I would be pushed. I have mixed feelings about the outcome. On one hand, I was used to end a war that killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, and millions of people across the world. On the other hand, pushing me killed over 80,000 people. Was it the right thing to do? I can't say. I'm just happy I was finally pushed. For a button like me that's all we want. How will the buttons you push today affect your tomorrow? And when you finally push the right button, will it be worth it?